Not related to Paper Mario Wii U rumours, just another of this writer's tired references

Sometimes Nintendo finds something it doesn't like and suddenly drops maintenance and network downtime upon us, and on other occasions it's simply a bit of regular house cleaning. It's the latter that's on the way early next week, so we thought we might as well give you advance warning.

On this occasion it should only interfere with a short spell of evening gaming in North America, while night owls in Europe may have to ease off Splatoon and get some rest. The date and time details are below.

@Octane Nah, my logic is that if there's no Direct by the end of January (which it's pretty much guaranteed not to be now) then the earliest the next Direct will be is 11th February to follow the trend of the Thursday before or during Valentine's Day that was present in 2013 and 2014.

Also Nintendo will anounce New Virtual Boy Color which will play all Virtual Boy games but will allow you to change the color from red to whatever your favorite color is.....or colour if you speak real English

News broke over on Kotaku that it was due to an exploit that let you introduce new elements in an online level, and have them show up in your run for World Records. Apparently someone found it after a user posted a 3 second run on a puzzle level that was impossible, told a YouTube streamer who validated it, and then pushed it to a Nintendo rep that amazingly responded (and took down the video that proved it as thanks).